Sunday, February 17, 2019

What's Next on the Meadowlark Bookshelf

A Publisher's Desk

I cleaned my desk last week (and it is still clean!) so now I can show you, quite literally, some pages from the next book that will appear on the Meadowlark Bookshelf. If you've been following Meadowlark for long, you'll remember James Kenyon, author of A Cow for College, winner of the 2018 Martin Kansas History Book Award. James has been hard at work on another book. He spent much of the last couple of years, in fact, driving back and forth across Kansas to complete this project.

This collection of stories of the former high schools of Kansas developed as I traveled through western Kansas fifty years after graduating—Class of 1966—with a class of six from Bogue Rural High School, Graham County. I started counting the towns where I played ball as a youth. All but one of the thirty-two had lost their high school in the intervening years. This collection of high school stories was compiled in effort to preserve a small part of these schools for history. The stories are varied. There is no intent to slight any community or former high school that was omitted. By writing about just one high school in each of the 105 Kansas counties, I provide a statewide perspective of Kansas. Four counties were given a second high school story as there were such great resources available I felt they needed to be included.

James handed the manuscript off to us last year and we have been hard at work editing, proofreading, and now finally laying out the book's interior. This is my favorite part of publishing. Building a book, page by page. We are so close!

Watch for more news about this forthcoming publication. We will be posting details about pre-ordering your copy soon!